Modern abrasives articles have become engineered to perform abrading operations on a broad range of industrial and commercial applications. Such applications can include the finishing of structural materials such as plastic, wood and metal, opthalmic lenses, fiber optics, and semiconductor materials such as silicon.
Most commonly, abrasive articles are made from a plurality of abrasive particles affixed to some sort of backing, which can be either rigid or flexible. In some cases, the abrasive particles are uniformly mixed with a polymeric binder to form a slurry, which is then coated onto the backing and cured to provide the final product. In other cases, the abrasive particles are aligned in a one or more layers over the backing and adhered to the backing by layers of curable resin known as a “make” coat and “size” coat. An advantage of the latter approach is that the abrasive particles can be partially embedded in the make and size coats in a preferred orientation that provides for an efficient rate of material removal, or cut.
A problem often encountered with these abrasive products is difficulty in abrading surfaces that are soft and difficult to finish. The performance of abrasive products on these materials tends to diminish as swarf particles coalesce and fill the spaces between the abrasive grains. The loading of this swarf prevents the abrasive from effectively contacting the work surface and reduces the cut. Empirically, it was discovered that this problem can be mitigated significantly by applying a “supersize” coat of a metal soap such as calcium stearate or zinc stearate on top of the abrasive particles. Advantageously, this supersize coat reduces loading of swarf and improves both the cut and lifetime of the abrasive product.